'Lost': Smoky gets in your eye

Los Lost-fans, I warn you: There is a spoiler ahead. Not for anyone who watched last night – you all know what’s coming/has come. For the rest of you stragglers, stop reading now. Really. Quit it. I’m totally gonna tell.

I’m telling!

OK, you asked for it: Dosvidanya, Mr. Eko. Thank you for dying. Not because you weren’t great – indeed, you were too good for the show. (And, it seems, you knew it,and made no attempt to hide your contempt.) My interest in Lost hasbeen on the wane. It used to be my one and only TV love. Nowadays – Ihate that you have to find out this way, Lost – I’m frakking someoneelse. Won’t name names, but you can figure it out.

Anyway, my enthusiasm last night went from watching-while-cooking tobeets-on-simmer. If only death and judgment always felt thatnear-at-hand, Lost might regain some of its seductive existential melancholy.

But here’s the real news: I’ve cracked the mystery of the Island.For realz, this time. The Island has a plan: To eliminate all blackpeople and replace them with the most annoying specimens of otherraces. We lose Michael and Walt? We gain Nikki and Paolo, a pair ofCousin Olivers so perfunctorily written, they’re barely there. ExitEko? Enter Angry Sawyer-whuppin’ Other, aka Scowlyguy McWifegotshot.Rose had better watch her back – and keep both hands on the wheel.

I’m going back to watching Lost with the beets at full boil and my attention directed dinnerward. FYI, that’s the last stage before TiVo cancellation.

PS: Who saw eyepatch man in the Pearl Station monitor (map-creator Radzinksy, perhaps? the owner of the long-forgotten glass eye?) and immediately thought, “Omigod! It’s Mystery Science Theater 3000!They’re on the Satellite of Love!” Put it this way: If threewisecracking silhouettes appeared at screen bottom during Locke’ssweatlodge sequence, I would not have batted an eyelash.